running with the stars in our eyes
by gokult
Summary: Take a deep breath, and let the rest come easy.
1. hell bound

**TITLE:** running with the stars in our eyes  
**GENRE:** romance, drama(?)  
**WORD COUNT:** 3637  
**NOTE:** heavily influenced by the birdcage manor series—  
_heavily_ recommend it!  
like _seriouslyyyY…  
_sorry if it's ooc, but well— yeAH ugh life uh... but please note that juvia isn't going to be all fangirly in this fic!  
always wanted to write for ft IDK WHY IT'S SO... angst uh and UGH GRUVIA IS MY OTP BUT WHY IS THIS SAD yah my life  
ft charas are five thousand percent hard and it makes me salty so jjaj  
rating may go up to m, but... for now.

* * *

_running _w. the_  
_ _**stars**  
__in our  
e  
y  
e  
s  
— _

_part un / / / / _ hell bound.

* * *

_i._

_._

"— so, I found you another model," Lyon tells him casually as he leans against the back of his chair, his bleached hair sticking up in all directions, his dark eyes glittering vaguely under dim, cheap fluorescent lights.

He grunts, twin black eyes staring back. "Who?"

All his cousin has ever been is sly and an asshole. "— just some street brave girl."

_._

_ii._

_._

When he first meets her, he's just kinda pissed, partly because he got woken up way too early, _mostly_ because Lyon's an absolute first-class ass, and that's just how their relationship runs.

She's short and skinny and mouths off at him. Her dark eyes flash, she's covered in harsh scratches, and her hair is a deep blue and hacked off at the edges. She's a greedy little kid at seventeen, and it makes him squint, because like _hell_ he'd need an immature girl like her to model for a stubborn ass of an artist like him.

Really, what does Lyon _see_ in a brat like this?

Eventually, he sees her face, her eyes, her hair, and it's all the same (and aren't they all?), and he sighs; he knows _exactly_ what Lyon sees. Her eyes are still rough around the edges, but she crouches protectively around a kitten, her arms tense, and he sees it all, he gets it all— it doesn't mean he has to _like_ it.

When Lyon tells him her name, all it does is roll around in his head uncomfortably; it's not the name he expects, and still, five and a half years later, he's not ready.

"— Juvia Lockser."

He sighs.

If anything, she's just another replacement in a long line of girls with fragile, fragile hearts.  
(Nobody will ever be good enough.)

_._

_iii._

_.  
_

Lyon smiles halfheartedly.

"I've got a knack for finding girls like her, ya know?"

The door slams in his face.

_._

_iv._

_.  
_

The second time he meets her, he's forgotten her name as it slipped deep within the cracks of his psyche, and she's battered and rough all around the edges.

Her brow is furrowed and angry and sharp, and her fingers dig into her palm. There's blood on her knees and cuts on her cheek and bruises everywhere, and all she's ever been is a street brave girl. Her blue hair is matted with dirt, and she smells suspiciously like cheap cologne, aftershave, and dirty money.

She stares at her knees in silence as they trudge down the road to an old and battered apartment building; it is eerily pretty and elegant and all too ugly at the same time. He glances back, sees the ugly gashes across her arms, the silent, unshed tears, the coins that glitter like gold and spill between her fingers, her ugly bruises and—

— it comes out spur of the moment; the raw emotion flashes across her face, and she's like an open book. He can see the suspicion that tinges the edges of her eyes, and if anything, it's a testament to— to _something. _

"— a model," he mutters, "should take better care of her body."

Her brow creases suddenly at his subtle insinuation, and he watches bemusedly as she grits her teeth, a subtle glare making its way to her eyes, and there's not even a twinge of grace or thanks in her eyes, and it sets something like a fire to his veins. Her eyes meet his as if gauging him, measuring him for what he's worth.

She's got a short fuse, he muses, when she starts shrieking things about not being his model and whatnot (and _wow_, not like he cares); she's clumsy and tired, she trips and falls, he catches her, and it's all like a flash to the past. She purses her lips, and her hair, though hacked off and angry, is soft against his arms.

She's _nothing_ like her, but her voice is soft and pretty and an octave too high. She's tired, this girl, and he doesn't know what it's supposed to mean to a guy who's still living and breathing in his past.

"I guess... I could model for you," she murmurs reluctantly as she snatches herself away from him again, her shoulders small against the entire world. He still doesn't know her name, and he doesn't bother to ask.

All it does is make his smile crooked and broken.

"Then," he says as he backs away, "I'll see you tomorrow night... at nine."

_._

_v._

_._

The first time she knocks on his door, she does it over and over and _over._ He opens it, his feet dragging across the floor; she looks almost startled when the door suddenly swings open, her knuckles in mid-knock. Her dark blue eyes are wide as she peers behind him curiously, already on her tiptoes, her mouth slightly open.

He glances at the bandages taped across her face and says nothing.

Juvia Lockser is a girl whose bare feet dance across the cracked wood of his floor. She breathes in the smell of oil pants and touches a paper city plastered across the wall and she models like a girl he used to think he knew.

He remarks lazily in reply as she huffs harshly back at him, her back stiff, looking half embarrassed and all too strangely _human_ in his apartment, surrounded by harsh edges and rough lines. Her awestruck eyes bother him, because they're full of stars and _life _and—

He pauses, stops, and she flinches, stares.

"What?" she asks skittishly, her teeth flashing between her lips. "— am I... doing it wrong?"

He twists the brush between his fingers; perhaps the problem lies in that she's not doing it wrong. His eyes stare back safely at a blank canvas. "No, that's good."

Her eyes are still pools of deep blue and living and everything he's ever wanted some other girl to be.

Juvia Lockser sits down and lays across her knees, and she _breathes_.

_._

_vi._

_._

"You're not going to ask me for my name?"

He sees his own sad, sad reflection in her eyes, and maybe its destiny they share the same fate— a curse of sadness, of always seeing something that doesn't exist anymore, of being broken. He's not sure if she sees it.

His fingers are calloused when she reaches over and touches his hand lightly, and she's surprisingly gentle and fragile as he sees her out; she doesn't smile, but he believes this unfamiliar girl has see-through eyes. The light of the hallway glows against her back, and he can see her bones.

"Juvia Lockser."

He offers a half-hearted smile, and a silent agreement is struck—  
— of what, he's still not sure.

Her skin is deceptively soft, her eyes deceptively naïve, and everything is cleverly broken.

"Gray— Gray Fullbuster."

_._

_vii._

_._

His name slips out between her lips like smoke.

_._

_viii._

_._

The days all roll together. She's scrawny when he paints her, but her legs have soft, subtle curves, and her elbow bends gently, and she's art on a canvas. Her fingers brush against the walls, trace the city that sprawls across his walls, and she hums soft, delicate songs that fill the air and leak into his closed ears desperately, as if attempting to fill in the cracks between the lines.

Problem is, it's not really her he's looking at; he thinks about it and realizes it's never been a problem in the end.

Juvia Lockser has a sharp tongue, but there are brief glimpses of times when everything is _nearly_ perfect, and everything is _nearly_ the same. Maybe it's the pose, maybe it's the light, maybe it's just _her_, but it's just right.

For a moment, she's not Juvia Lockser— she's a girl who only breathes in his memories, a girl who only exists within paper thin edges.

She may not be _the_ girl, but she's amusing, and it'll have to be good enough until the next one.

_._

_ix._

_._

The first day she points out Mikey Chuck, a boy painted within the deep intricacies of a city crawling with lines and roads and cities and buildings, a boy with a red hat and a striped shirt, it scares him. It's an ordinary day, one where she balances on her toes along the cracks of his floorboards, one where her fingers dip into cool bed sheets as she stares at the ceiling.

"Hey, Mikey Chuck," she murmurs under her breath, her fingertips brushing along the small baseball cap. She blinks as if startled when all she feels is wall, her thick eyelashes brushing against her cheek.

His grip on the paintbrush hardens.

The silence grows long and thin. It's too much, he thinks; just a few weeks into the job, and this girl is a little bit different and all too familiar.

It could just be the fact that she isn't professional, or the fact that she's only seventeen, but her eyes always grow soft as they slide across the fake horizons of some old paper city— it's as if she knows. Some part of him wouldn't be surprised.

"You know," she says aloud, her voice soft as it creeps over his canvas, "I like this painted city of yours."

"... mm."

He can already imagine the roll of her eyes; the bed sheets shift, and the bed creaks as she moves. He can just barely make out the blue in her eyes as he turns around and brushes soft bristles into wet paint.

"Yeah," she murmurs thoughtfully, "reminds me of something you're missing, these days."

_._

_x._

_._

They've fallen into a routine, of sorts.

The job starts off when Juvia stalks inside, the click of the lock behind her, the muggy scent of the city clinging to her clothes. She's always a little loud with the tinge of an edge around her, the heels of her shoes clacking against his floor, but her voice is always startling soft and rounded around the corners as she hums lightly. There's always the rustle of plastics, and when she comes closer, he can smell the grease on her skin.

He wrinkles his nose as she bops him on the head. "Don't be a kid; you need to eat," she scolds as she shoves cold noodles at him. His eyes darken at the deep gashes along her arms, and without batting an eyelash, she lowers her sleeve and persists with a silky sweet smile.

"I'm not _paying_ you to get me food," he retorts sulkily as they graze over the situation, his eyes twitching towards black coffee. She grabs chopsticks and slams them into his hand as she turns on her heel.

He ignores her mumbles of him being an _"ungrateful bastard."_

"No," she agrees with a subtle snort. Her fingertips reach for the buckle of her boot, and he has trouble multitasking half-assed eating and attempting to start to sketch— he can already see her eyes roll.

Her clunky boots come off first, sliding to the floor as she makes her way towards the bed. She takes off her clothes quickly, slipping them to the floor as her arms carefully wound themselves around her chest. She lands with a gentle thump against scratchy, warm blankets, her eyes tracing the room. She glares at him when she realizes he's staring, and he slurps noodles in reply.

"— all you _do_ is pay me to strip."

He supposes the pervert part is implied, these days, but it doesn't stop his smile from curling.

_._

_xi._

_._

He takes a singular long drag from his cigarette one day, a lazy breath of smoke circling out of his mouth and through the window. Juvia blinks drowsily from her position on the bed, the magazine upside down across her chest.

"I didn't know you smoked," she remarks, blinking startlingly blue eyes at him. He shrugs, takes a second, a third, a fourth, and all he ever tries to do is breathe his ghosts through the window.

"Have been for awhile," he replies. She stands up delicately, her toes tiptoeing across the floor as she glides up to the window next to him. Her arms sprawl across the window sill leisurely as she picks away at the old, cracked white paint. He grabs a sheet and drapes it around her pale, bare shoulders, and their fingers brush as she takes it from him, and he pulls away hastily.

If she notices, Juvia doesn't say anything, and he's never expected her to.

"That'll wreck your lungs," she remarks lightly instead whilst waggling her fingertip; he grunts, and she sticks her tongue out at him childishly. Her blue hair, now down to her shoulders, waves in the breeze, and the smoke curls around her.

With small fingers, she suddenly plucks the cigarette out of his mouth, and he stares as she almost deliberately places it between her lips. She takes a single long drag, the puff of smoke leaving a hazy path as she blows it through her lips like a whisper, like a dream.

Privately, he wonders what her ghosts are; he never asks, and she never tells.

"That'll wreck your lungs," he mocks her.

Her grin is crooked, teeth bared between pretty lips, the cigarette pinched between slim fingers, cocked like a gun; all she's _ever_ been is dangerous.

"— I'm already wrecked."

_._

_xii._

_._

There's only a single moment when he sees her as _vulnerable. _Her eyes are glassy when she focuses on the city walls, and she grazes her fingertip against a building with flashy lights and cheap dreams that drown under shower curtains and dusty sheets drunk on fake love and money, money, money, and when she meets his eyes, her smile is small and weak and a secret all in one.

He doesn't ask, but Juvia's perceptive, and she arches a slim brow in reply. She falls back onto the bed, her fingertip drawing far, far away from the building on the wall, her eyes closed, and her pale legs flash under dim lights as she stretches them skywards.

"Aren't you going to ask?" she says aloud as she curls her back, her bones popping. She doesn't turn towards him like he expects, but the weight of her cold, dark blue eyes persists. He raises a brow back at her as he follows the shallow curve of her knee.

"Do you _want_ me to?"

Juvia's smile is vaguely amused but all too sad, and she never answers.

_._

_xiii._

_._

"You're using me, aren't you?" she asks one day out of the blue, her hair a stark contrast against starchy white sheets. He can feel her cold eyes through the canvas, but he can't sense any anger or sadness or disappointment or _regret— _his eyes swell up to meet hers, and she has a shallow smile resting on her lips.

"Aren't we both," he answers, his eyes closing, and it isn't a question.

Juvia has misty eyes as she turns back to the ceiling, her eyelids fluttering closed in half agreement.

"... are you calling me broken?" she accuses just minutes later after tumultuous silence, but there's no bite to it. He snorts in reply, and she laughs.

_"Are_ you?" he flashes back, the words slipping out almost carelessly. She freezes, her shoulders stiff, the silence deafening, and Juvia's blue eyes, see-through and all too aware of it all, and all too strangely delicate, like a string about to snap, stare at him as if he's insane.

"Of course I am," she murmurs, her voice amused, but her eyes all too cold, "isn't it obvious?"

_It is, _his mind hums as he bites his tongue, _but it's not my place to say._

Juvia smirks, her lips pulling.

"— hypocrite."

_._

_xiv._

_._

He always tries to get her to leave before she falls asleep; it never works, and she sleeps like the dead and looks like a child.

Honestly, Juvia falls asleep half the time anyway when she models. Most of the time he whaps her on the head with his canvas, but sometimes he brushes his fingertips over her shoulders, the gesture strangely familiar as he throws a blanket over her.

She breathes gently, her hair wispy over her forehead, and she talks in her sleep. It's something along the lines of chocolate, cake, ice cream, and parfaits, and she's definitely drooling along the way.

It's all _very_ unattractive, really.

In times like these, he remembers that Juvia's only seventeen, and she's not supposed to be broken the way she is.

When he wakes up the next morning with a canvas as his pillow, the blanket is thrown across the room, she's sprawled across the floor, snoring and drooling, and all he does is crack a smile.

_._

_xv._

_._

Juvia's pretty in an unconventional way.

He sees it in the shallow waves of her hair, in the long lashes that shadow her cheeks, in the brilliant blues that stares into him and the ghosts that haunt him.

She smiles at him, and he looks away.

_._

_xvi._

_._

Juvia's a quiet girl that brings him food nearly everyday, and when she doesn't, she throws a bag of chips at his face, smirking triumphantly when it smacks him across the face. Even so, she's gentle when she handles him, her eyes tracing him and his broken, broken walls— they dance around each other as if it could fix something.

As if they needed fixing.

She argues with Lyon occasionally, the voices echoing against usually silent walls. She's unconventional in the most ironic of ways, she snores and drools in his room at two o'clock, and she makes his room smell less like acrylic paints and more like a bakery shop.

Juvia smells like the city, grease, smoke, and a little like vanilla; these days, the smell of oil paints cling to her clothes, to her skin.

He grabs at her collar just as she's about to lunge for some cake, and she groans as he yanks her back to the bed. Lyon babies her, dangling the piece teasingly in front of her. She bites down hard on his thumb; Lyon yelps like a girl, and Juvia smiles as she apologizes, her eyes mischievous.

They're bantering, it's too damn noisy in his apartment, and Juvia Lockser is laughing; there are days when he wonders.

He's still not sure what it means.

_._

_xvii._

_._

The lock opens with a loud clatter, the door slamming open, and she runs inside, her stilettos clacking off at the entrance. Juvia brings in the smell of cheap, dank perfume, her hair reckless, her chapstick smeared against her pale cheek, her short dress riding up her thigh dangerously, and there's blood trickling; somewhere in the mess, she smells like vanilla and oil pants, and it suffocates them both.

Juvia stops, her eyes wild, and she's panting, and it takes her nearly four minutes before she can finally settle down without her hands shaking.

"— sorry I'm late," she finally says shortly as she shakes her blue hair out of her face, her eyelashes clinging to the edges as she attempts to blow them away. He stares at her lazily, his eyes appraising her; it isn't the first time, and he expects it won't be the last, either. He's never asked, and she doesn't expect him to.

In the day, Juvia Lockser is just a girl— a seventeen year old girl who's only cracked around the edges, the pieces tacked together with extra tape. In the night, when he can't see her, Juvia Lockser turns old, and she's not just cracked— she's lost all the pieces.

He tosses her some gauze and antibiotics, and she glares at him for a moment; she deflates as he settles it around her cuts, her fingers still trembling as she curls them into his sheets. Juvia's eyes search his for a moment, and she shivers as she looks away, biting her lip. "Can I... sleep here?"

"Yeah," he says with a shrug.

"..."

"..."

"... are you going to ask?"

"You're so stupid," he answers tersely. Juvia doesn't answer, and for the first time, he realizes he's found a girl who's just as broken as him. She stares at him earnestly as she tucks a hair behind her ear, her eyes tracing their way down his face.

"Desperate," she eventually corrects him, and he doesn't bother to reply.

_._

_xviii._

_._

Her thin legs dangle off the bed, her fingers brushing against tired eyelids. His white button-up swallows her, the collar sweeping her chin, and it's almost horrifying how it's longer than her dress that's thrown off somewhere on his floor. "You're still awake?"

He nods noncommittally, the paints smeared against the palm of his hand and all over his light grey button-up shirt, his thumb tracing the edges of the canvas in front of him. He gropes around for a watch, and three fifty AM glares back at him. He curses vaguely under his breath as he exhales.

He needs a smoke.

Her dark blue eyes stare into him, boring into his wrinkled shirt collar; they haunt him more than anything else. He's not expecting it when she says it, and it's a little like déjà vu and a sucker punch to the heart. Juvia has a vague, gentle sort of smile, and it's, it's as if she knows, as if she _knows_,

"— you're... something else, Gray."

All her eyes ever seem to be is a conspiracy theory.

.

**TBC.**

* * *

although definitely inspired by the residents of birdcage manor, it won't _exactly _be like it, so yeah!  
if you've read it you can probably see the parallels though.

i'm awfully sorry if they're ooc,  
but i had far too much fun writing this.

i hope ya liked it- i update slow tho lawl  
i destroyed these people sorry

**xxx.**


	2. acrophobia

**TITLE:** running with the stars (2)  
**GENRE: **romance, angst, drama  
**WORD COUNT:** 3858  
**NOTES: **originally this was going to progress faster but weLL  
thanks for all the sweet reviews; dedicated to my legit kohai **written_by**  
who literally writes better than me _TENKS __FOR BEING SWEET TO ME_  
/disappears into the sun

* * *

_running _w. the_  
_**_stars_**_  
__in our__  
__e__  
__y__  
__e__  
__s__  
__—_

_part deux _/ / / / acrophobia.

* * *

_i. _

_._

Fairy Tail Manor is one of those rundown, suspicious buildings that appear in the corner of every picture— its grandeur is like faded chamomile tea, a stain that won't come out even as people scrub away at it desperately, and the paint chips at the edges. There are shadowy figures in every window, and weeds run rampant in the front-yard. There's only a single flowerbox full of wilting daisies at the very top of the mansion, and nobody waters them.

The daisies live— somehow.

There's always an almost brief pause, a brief murmur at the mention of Fairy Tail's name; it's like a sad exhale, and he sits in his room, his eyes blinking and unfading and never forgetting.

The people of Fairy Tail Manor are just as pale, as if life bleeds from their veins and seeps into the sepia toned walls, the cheap florals gaining color as they walk through the hollow halls. Everybody knows who the others are, like the strange pink-haired pastor boy without a father, a blonde girl with a rusty type writer and dollars to her body, a red-haired girl without a name and the blue-haired boy who names her, an owner who hardly exists, an alcoholic woman with bills to pay and too many tarot cards, and three siblings— a bartender, a hulking, huge man, and a pet-store owner (two alive with frowns, one dead with a smile).

Nobody's _quite_ whole,  
(and nobody _quite_ knows what that means.)

"... everybody who lives here is so _peculiar_," she murmurs aloud one day out of the blue, her eyes distantly pensive as she freezes her movements. Sunlight weakly makes its way through the dusty window, and spots of light dance across her face as she pulls her knees in— her eyes glow deep blow. Gray bobs his head in half assent.

"_You_ live here," he points out dryly, his pencil rounding out the edges of her face. Juvia tilts her head, a hollow smile making its way across her face as she poses her fingers into a rectangle, his face somewhere in the center. He grunts at her antics for a moment.

"So do you," she eventually replies with a lopsided laugh, and it echoes through paper-thin walls and winding hallways and florals that wiggle in the sunlight as if they're _alive_.

_._

_ii. _

_._

"— you should get out more," Natsu remarks one day as he falls on top of his bed with a loud crash, his pink hair a startling contrast against the walls. He raises a brow as Natsu swings the master-key around his finger.

Damn bell-boy.

Gray takes a narrow glance at Natsu before glancing back down at his canvas, looking obviously disgruntled. Natsu grins— Gray wonders where it comes from for a second, knowing his past, but eventually rolls his eyes when Natsu strikes a pose.

"— ugly model," he remarks shortly in reply, his eyes critical, and Natsu snorts, but for once, doesn't retort. For a second, Natsu's eyes shift, and the bed creaks under his weight. When his gaze rests on a sketch of a girl, his brow furrows for a second as he tugs on his scarf; Gray ignores it, but the room shrinks smaller, like claustrophobia edging into his brain.

Natsu frowns in recognition— Natsu _knows _what he's doing, and for half a second, he can't breathe.

"Gray," Natsu says quietly, "it's been _five_ _years_."

There's a beat of silence, and—

"… she's still _here,"_ he mutters in reply, and Natsu offers a dubious stare.

He doesn't really care what anybody says. She still exists within the pages, on his canvas, in the walls, in the air he breathes, in this apartment— she exists everywhere. Everywhere he turns, he sees wistful eyes, flashing teeth, pale, periwinkle dresses and the one time she smiled on top of unsteady wrought iron. She is _everywhere_, and he's never been able to escape.

He's not sure he _wants_ to.

For a moment, they both pause, the silence deafening and hardening and _pressing_ against his ears, like a desperate sort of pressure that aches at the edges, and it all comes rushing back— that day, a single jump, creaking black iron and weak fences, his hand stretched out to catch some(body_)_ that didn't belong to him—_never_ belonged to him— and sky— pure blue sky that doesn't fade or weaken, and Gray feels sick to his stomach, his head spinning. He pants, his breath short and struggling to come free, until Natsu grabs onto his shoulders and shakes, _hard_, and when he looks into his eyes, he sees a desperate reflection— his own— and Natsu sighs, his eyes dark and unreadable.

_At least it's not pity_, his mind whispers wryly, but his heart beats erratically, and the problem is he can't see clearly between reality and his _dreams._

Gray stares at Mikey Chuck, a single New York Yankees ball cap print in a single massive sprawl of pure, undiluted city in all of its expansive scope and terror, and all he can feel are her cool fingertips, a fresh breeze, and lavender.

"I couldn't forget even if I wanted to."

_._

_iii._

_._

One day, when the fluorescent lights flicker, when her fingertips graze the ceiling as if she were stretching toward the sky, when she hums under her breath and fists her secrets deep into her heart, it rains.

Her teacup falls with a clatter onto the floor, the cheap plastic bouncing off and spilling tea everywhere, and the scent is gentle as it seeps between the empty cracks of his floorboard. If Juvia notices, she doesn't say anything— she stares out the window as if in an empty trance, her eyes already torn apart and barely holding together at the seams.

The rain slides down the window pane, the drops leaving slight trails, and everything fogs and nothing can be seen. The light fades away to a pale gray, and everything is fuzzy around the edges, as if rounded out roughly with coarse sandpaper. Her eyes are wide and confused, her brows furrowed, and her mouth is a tight line and all too lost. Her breaths come shallow at the touch, and it's just a blunted butterfly's breath with every second that ticks by.

Juvia's eyes flicker, and her pale fingertips clench, and—

"— I need to leave," she murmurs suddenly, standing abruptly; her body shakes with every word.

He'd say something, honestly, but he sees her eyes and how they've turned glassy, and how with every single ounce of her being she pulls into herself, her shoulders hunched, and all Juvia looks like is small and sad and _wilted_. Instead, he doesn't question her, because Gray sees himself in nearly every facet of this girl, and it makes him wonder if he's really as broken as she is.

He doesn't stop to think about it.

He never asks, but Juvia's always been rather perceptive. On her way out the door, she pauses, her head tilted slightly, her hand curled around the antique crystal door handle delicately. Her breaths come fast and few, and he can feel the weight of her cold eyes on his back as he turns— the undercurrent of "_you wouldn't understand,_" persists with every heavy word she speaks.

She looks like she's about to cry.

"I hate the rain."

_._

_iv. _

_._

"... how ironic," he eventually says after she leaves, the scent of mint and earl grey tea still in the air even after she's long gone. He takes out a cigarette, the battered box falling back onto the ground with a thick _thud, _and instead fills the room with the addictive scent of smoke and smog— _anything,_ his heart thrums, _to get rid of her_— _anything,_ his mind hums, _to never see her._

All Juvia's ever been like is the rain.

_._

_v._

_._

When Juvia comes back at nine o'clock the next day, she has dark circles under her eyes and she's pale and her breathing runs thin, thin, thin. It's cloudy, and streaky moonlight makes its way through the window as he stares down at her and the way her bones glow against cheap fluorescent lights.

When the rain starts to hit the window pane again, she flinches, her eyes angry and harsh and pools of regret as she trembles to her fingertips.

For a few minutes, it's like she forgets he _exists— _as if in a trance, she stares out the window, her eyebrows creased as her ghosts come back to beat at her heart and eat away at her. The rain melts into her cool blue eyes, and the window fogs at her fingertips as her mouth slowly shakes to a close.

"I—" she begins, as if steeling herself to go inside—

"— _go,"_ he interrupts her as if he _understands_ her— as if he _knows_ who she is and what she stands for and _why_.

He doesn't, though— and that's why they both freeze, as if winter slowly creeped into the doorway, and it's so, so cold.

Gray doesn't pity her, honestly— if anything, it's like a brief connection of broken people and what they represent, and all he wants is for her to be put back together again (if only so he knows it's damn _possible_ in this damn broken world).

Juvia stares at him carefully for a moment, her head eventually dipping and bowed as her hair falls in waves over her eyes, and he can feel her pride crippling under the weight of every raindrop that hits the pavement. Juvia's eyes are misty like the rain when she looks back up, and all that's left behind is a washed out seventeen year old girl.

For a second, it looks as if she wants to ask something—?

"I— _thanks_," she says hoarsely, her shoulders quivering desperately.

Their secrets bleed between their tightly fisted fingertips, the whispers of pain and sadness and loneliness echoing with the rain, and she doesn't bother to ask if he wants to know.

They both know the answer.

_._

_vi._

_._

There are three unspoken rules when she steps into his apartment, the floral wallpaper cracked and curling and tacked at the edges, his windows wide open with the sun streaming in, his painted city sprawled across the walls, glittering and flashing as if it was alive.

_i_. no personal questions asked.  
_ii._ secrets are never breathed.  
_iii._ time stops—

_._

_v. _

_._

— if only for a single moment, the past fails to move forward, memories fail and never come, and the future remains forever golden, like shallow cracks of sunshine, when he's in an apartment at nine o'clock.

For a moment, time stops, because she makes it easy to forget.

_._

_vi. _

_._

The floor cracks under every step she takes, her tiptoes dancing across the floorboards, and her stale croissant crumbles beneath her thumb.

They say it takes twenty-one days for a habit to form. Gray forgets who tells him so— it might've been the old man that bit the dust, the pastor that says wobbly words over his radio, the choir preaching in the background— it might've even been the old guy with the huge grin that owns the place, his back as crooked as the rest of the people in this damn manor.

It takes twenty-one days for a habit to form.

At nine o'clock, his head tilts as her heels click into the hallway, and his shoulders raise as she knocks primly, and his feet drag across the floor if only to see her cold blue eyes and lilting smile.

The habit isn't seeing her at nine o'clock— it's just seeing her, the way her back arches, the way her eyes ache at the rain, the way she breathes smoke through the window like tender curls that strain through the smog— it's a habit he needs to break, a habit he craves to snap the chains to.

But he can't, he realizes, when her laughter trickles through the edges of her lips, when she makes him eat and calls him names, when she drags him up and about, when she reenacts her stupid soap operas, when she beams at him and when all Juvia Lockser seems like is a pretty seventeen year old girl with duct tape winded around all the broken pieces that crack with every little step she takes.

Juvia smiles one day when he's at the breaking point, the edges of her teeth grazing her lip, her pale legs sweeping against the floor as fluorescent lights flicker.

She's like nicotine pumping through his veins, and he'd almost like to call it an addiction.

_._

_vii. _

_._

Juvia leans against the window pane, her hands stretched out toward the city as if to hold it in the palm of her hand. She clenches her fist as if to crush it, and she has the smallest, saddest sort of smile on her face; it's the kind she wears when she doesn't know, when nobody knows.

"Acrophobia," she murmurs as she stands on her tiptoes, her eyes glancing back down towards the ground briefly as if to count every little speck— a red car passing by, a pretty blonde girl, a cat.

Gray stiffens— he doesn't like the word, for some reason, and it echoes deep into his bones and runs somewhere into his veins and it _speaks_— it speaks fear and loneliness and _guilt_, and it bleeds as pain trickles down his arm and into his wrist.

"... what's that?"

Juvia blinks for a moment, as if considering the question— as if not expecting a response, really, and her thick eyelashes and blue eyes stare into him, boring holes into his skull as she smiles charmingly, her pale dress loose around her waist. She pretends as if she doesn't know what she's doing to him.

"It's the technical term for the fear of heights."

Her skinny wrists remind him of desperation as her white skin flashes in the sunlight— her skinny wrists remind him of _somebody else._

He feels his chest tighten, he can't _breathe_, and the sky is closing in—

"— but really," she whispers, her blue eyes staring back out at the sky, her smile almost wistful and all too-knowing, "it's the fear of just _falling_."

Gray can't answer— perhaps never could answer— because his ghosts are coming back to haunt him.

_._

_viii. _

_._

She goes hurtling down to earth, her body smashed into pieces on the ground as the fence bends to her will and not his, as she smiles for only half a second and leaves behind the _faintest_ hint of lavender that trails in the air—

She whispers into his ear as she lets go.

He's not sure what he fears most.

Her, being so high she could touch the sky, her bone thin legs flashing in the sunlight as caution tape rounds itself around his balcony because the iron is weak and so is her body as it bends in the air, or maybe it's just her _falling_.

He fears of falling, of her breaking as soon as she touches the pavement, of never being able to put the pieces back together again— he fears of _falling, _of never being able to pick himself back up from all the guilt that winds deep into his gut because _you couldn't save her._

When his fingers shake as he takes her cold hand into his, and his entire world comes crashing down on him and he doesn't _understand why_— but he _gets_ it, and it makes his mind reel and his heart tremble, and his hands are full of blood that splatters onto his neat white shirt.

It's not a fear of falling or a fear of heights— it's a fear of never knowing _why_, and his dark eyes scream as she bleeds life into the concrete.

_._

_ix. _

_._

Gray always dreams in black and white. It's almost as if his paintings bleed the color from his dreams, and all he sees on the darkest of nights are shades of grey.

But whenever he dreams of _her_, everything is _red_. Desperately red, like a glaring neon sign as he tries to change fate, over and over. It's a nightmare, a living nightmare as she falls, over and over and _over_ and she's just shatters and absolute _pieces_ on the floor.

When he tries to put her back together, his fingers tracing the lines of red as she continues to bleed into his palms, there are little slivers missing and she's _too_ _broken_ with the last smile she ever breathed etched onto her pretty little face.

_It's all his fault, all _your _fault, _his mind screeches as he continues to desperately clutch onto a lifeless hand, and all he sees is red because it bleeds into his palm and onto his shirt and into the concrete and into the _world_, and it's endless until—

— until there's a cool, almost not-there touch, and the red leaks out as if draining slowly away from him, and for some reason he stretches towards the pain desperately— so as not to forget, so as to _never_ forget.

It's his punishment, his shackle— his _love_.

He opens his eyes and all he sees is blue— cool blue eyes and wavy blue hair and blue, and a soft, not quite there smile.

"You looked like you were having a nightmare," she remarks softly, a note of concern creeping into her voice.

Gray's not sure what he's beginning to crave more.

_._

_x. _

_._

Lyon finds him out on the balcony, the black iron door swinging shut behind him as they both breathe their ghosts into the sky.

The smoke puffs gently out— "… reopening old wounds?"

Gray almost smirks.

"It hurts for us both," he replies tiredly, a half-assed sketch of the new city buildings sprawled in front of him.

Lyon chuckles as he leans dangerously far across the wrought iron, loosening his tie along the way; Gray doesn't bother to stop him— they both are just rubbing salt in the wound, making the pain just as fresh as _that_ day. They both hate heights— _falling_, perhaps, and staying here, drinking in the air she breathed before she disappeared— _passed away_, his mind mocks—is like hatred that fills his lungs and stays there.

It's like smoke and cigarettes and _cancer_.

Maybe she's always been his own personal disease, and Gray rubs his wrists at the thought.

After several moments of silence, of just pouring smoke into the sky and out into the world as if to spread pain wherever he goes, Lyon points away into the sky, his eyes shadowed. "You were always her favorite."

Gray snorts as he rubs his wrists again, shallow pangs of pain running skinny threads down to his heart. The doctor calls them phantom pains— Gray wonders.

"You say that as if it's a good thing."

_._

_xi. _

_._

Juvia tumbles inside with a tattered dress and bruises up her arms and a smeared smile— sloppy, kind, yet all too angry. The door swings shut behind her, the lock clicking and key falling out, hook line and sinker.

She has alcohol pounding through her veins— he can smell it on her sweet breath when she giggles as she winds her long, skinny arms around his neck. For a second, he stiffens, but eventually Gray closes his eyes, and if they both play pretend, he can almost smell lavender in the air as she settles her cool, pale thighs around his waist. Paper money and gold coins tumble out of her hand and onto the floor with a pretty clatter_— _it goes ignored. Instead, her lips are soft against the veins in his neck, and all she's ever been is an addiction— a pain reliever.

"You're drunk," he reminds her quietly, his calloused fingers tracing at the bruises that line her pale arms. She doesn't flinch, but he knows it hurts even as she hums in reply.

"Does it make a difference?" she challenges sharply, all the pain written across her face like an open book— he doesn't know her story, and she doesn't know his. He wonders if that makes anything any better, if it makes the pain any weaker, and if it makes it any easier to just _forget_.

"Coward," she says when he doesn't reply, a shallow, angry laugh making its way through her throat; Juvia is like a flick of the tongue— rough, unrounded, all too truthful, and all too untrusting.

There's a beat of silence, her heart thrumming against his chest, and_—__  
_

"_— _a fear of falling," he corrects her softly, and Juvia's face suddenly crumples, her eyes broken to pieces before him as he smells the cheap perfume on her skin and thick alcohol on her tongue before she hides herself deep into his neck and _stays_ there. She doesn't cry, but her eyelashes brush against his neck as she closes her eyes and sighs deeply, her smooth exhale a warning that sounds deep into his veins, and it does all the crying for her.

Gray rubs at his wrists, and if he plays pretend, he can smell lavender and feel her skeleton fingers resting against the pulse of his heart.

_._

_xii._

_._

He can't save anybody, anymore.

_._

**TBC.**

* * *

school has started for me. you can slay me now.  
thanks a bunch for positive feedback tbh heh

this chapter diverges more from the orig birdcage manor series but there will be several parallels to certain characters so watch out for it hehe  
and btw i love angst so this could take a more (/HAIRFLIP) dramatic turn, but yanno

sorry if this is totally unsatisfactory i just wanted to properly develop them but did that even happen ANSWER IS NO  
basically- ACTUALLY the plot will come as it will but i swear it's coming? SORRY IF THIS ISN'T... V GOOD i'm working on it  
but teehee pls review cc and anything else n tenks for reading! :-)

lit sorry if this 2nd chapter doesn't make sense like who the hell knows anymore  
_EDIT: _I USED THE WRONG FEAR I'M A LEGITIMATE IDIOT GOODBYE LAUGHS AT SELF

**xxx.**


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